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Los Angeles- and Seattle-based creative agency We Are Royale (WAR) brings Ravensburger’s trading card game, Disney Lorcana, in a series of animated trailers. Each trailer – "Into the Inklands," "Ursula’s Return" and "Shimmering Skies" – was created to promote the release of three new card sets featuring mash-ups of characters from such popular Disney franchises as Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Little Mermaid, Mulan, Encanto, Wreck-It Ralph and more.

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To create the trailers, WAR used such animated techniques as 2.5D, cel and 3D animation, overlaying everything with a painterly aesthetic.

The game’s characters are called glimmers. WAR “hand-painted every glimmer and background to ensure that their world’s look and feel was enthused throughout the animation,” said Elleyce Pahang, We Are Royale’s associate art director in a statement.

WAR's objective was to animate a variety of Storyborn, Dreamborn, and Floodborn glimmers from the realm of Lorcana. 

“We wanted to create a sense of the glimmers inhabiting the space and interacting, to feel the dappled moonlight of the Bayou cascade across their poses, or their shadows on the floor grounding them in the space,” said Jared Norby, animation director at We Are Royale, also in a statement. 

Into the Inklands tells the story of Venturo – an Illumineer – and his journey beyond the Great Illuminary to find the Lucky Dime from DuckTales, along with glimmers of Tinker Bell, Prince Eric, and Audrey from Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

Ursula’s Return continues the story of the Illumineers, this time venturing out with Mulan, Ariel, and Mickey Mouse glimmers to Ursula’s lair to retrieve the stolen Hexwell Crown and King Triton’s trident. However, they are confronted by Ursula's army of entangled glimmers, which includes Bruno from Encanto, Magica De Spell from DuckTales, Jafar and more.

After defeating Ursula, the Illumineers celebrate their victory in Shimmering Skies, a spectacle of a festival full of glimmers like Wreck-It Ralph, Vanellope, Merlin from Sword in the Stone, Bruni from Frozen 2, Gazelle from Zootopia, Basil from The Great Mouse Detective and more.

“To see these characters from Disney’s rich history reinterpreted as beautiful glimmers is exciting,” said Pahang. “You really get to see them with fresh eyes.” 

To also serve Disney Lorcana's international audience – with players across Italy, Germany and France – WAR aimed to convey different character traits and emotions through silent storytelling, relying on universally understandable body language whenever possible.

For the environments, WAR's biggest task was to paint a picture of the game experience. The environments are largely derived from the visual language and lore of Disney Lorcana. 

“The environments are imaginative, as we had the creative reins to come up with some really beautiful backgrounds,” said We Are Royale Art Director Angelica Baini, who helmed the environments. “There are also some backgrounds that, if you're a huge fan of Disney, you would definitely recognize.”

We Are Royale collaborated with composer Allen Bickle of Granted Music to enhance the stories, incorporating a wide variety of musical genres and styles, from modern to quintessential Disney-inspired sounds. 

“Storytelling remains at the heart of the game and of our trailers,” said Norby. “And we continue to delve into new animation techniques collaborating with the team at Ravensburger, translating their beautiful game design and worldbuilding. Many of them are animators, designers, and illustrators themselves, and they've just been excellent partners.” 

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